Life is a Highway
by Aebhel
Summary: In which Dean and Sam cross paths with an old acquaintance on a stretch of haunted road. Adult themes.


A/N: Okay, so I've been mainlining SPN. Does it show? Anyway, this fic is a spin-off of fleshflutter's absolutely excellent fic, The Old Block, which can be found at _fleshflutter (dot) livejournal (dot) com/4337 (dot) html._

Stevie is cribbed (with permission) from her. Read it first. This fic will probably make sense without that backstory, but you should still read fleshflutter's fic first. It's amazing.

Warnings: mentions of past child abuse and non-con. Typical angst.

* * *

The butt of the shotgun slams into Stevie's temple while his right foot is still in midair over the doorstep, and the chilly autumn dusk slides away in a whirl of dull color. His cheekbone connects hard with the porch railing, and that's the last thing he's aware of for a long time.

* * *

He comes awake, abruptly, to a faceful of lukewarm beer. There's a sock stuffed in his mouth--a dirty sock, by the taste of it--and his hands and feet are bound with coarse rope. His head is hanging toward his lap. From the dull, throbbing ache in his shoulders, he's been in this position a while.

"You'd better not have killed him," says a voice somewhere to his left. Male. Young, from the sound of it, and kind of impatient.

"He's not dead." The second voice is even deeper, and something about it sends a thread of recognition winding through the back of Stevie's mind. He tries to grab at it, but it slips away just as the voice remarks, "Which is too bad, really."

"We need him."

"Yeah, yeah." A gusty sigh, and then the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. It stops in front of him, and a rough hand grips his jaw and forces his head up. Stevie tries to flinch away, and only realizes his mistake when the man chuckles unkindly. "Yup, he's awake. Showtime."

He considers keeping his eyes shut, but it's a little late for that now. Still, it takes several seconds for his surroundings to swim into focus. He's in a room, a cheap motel room by the look of it. His feet are bound to the legs of a heavy wooden chair, and there's a dark-haired young man straddling an identical chair in front of him. He's dirty and unshaven, and there's a half-full bottle of cheap beer dangling from one hand. Behind him is another young man, shaggy haired and just as grimy, sitting on the edge of a table and cleaning a shotgun with quick, competent motions.

"Hey there, Stevie." Stevie doesn't like the way his name sounds in the man's mouth, like it's an insult all on its own, and he really doesn't like the way the man is smiling at him. It's not a nice smile. "We need to ask you a couple of things. Now, I'm gonna take the sock out of your mouth, and if you start yelling I'll break your neck. You think you can try to be smart, here?"

He waits for Stevie to nod before yanking the makeshift gag out of his mouth. Stevie coughs, licks his lips with a tongue that tastes like dirty cotton. When he speaks, his voice is a frightened, rasping whisper. "My wallet's in my back pocket. Take it. Take whatever you want."

"We already did, actually," says the shaggy-haired man mildly. "But thanks."

"What do you want from me?"

"Information," says the short haired one. "We might even let you live." His smile widens into a dimpled grin that would be charming if it weren't for his eyes, which are as green and cold as two jade rocks.

"I don't have any information," Stevie mutters.

"Oh, don't sell yourself short, Stevie. I bet you know all kinds of things about all kinds of things."

"Dean," says the shaggy-haired guy sharply. "Would you stop fucking around and interrogate the man already?"

Dean. Stevie files that away for future reference. Dean with the dark hair and the green eyes and the naggingly familiar face. The name feels familiar too, but once again, recognition slips out of his grasp.

Dean glances over his shoulder at the other guy, rolls his eyes extravagantly. "You know, we could just leave him for it. Not like he doesn't have it coming."

For _it._ A tendril of real fear winds its way into Stevie's gut and ties itself into a cold, hard knot. Whatever _it_ is, he wants nothing to do with it.

"Look," he says, trying to keep his voice soft and reasonable. It's harder than it should be when his tongue feels like it's been shrink-wrapped to the roof of his mouth. "I don't know what you think I did, but--"

"Shut the fuck up," Dean snarls. It's shocking and more than a little scary, the way he shifts from lazy insolence to fury in the space of one breath. If the sudden venom in his voice wasn't enough to make Stevie recoil, the big .45 that's shoved under his chin sure as hell does the trick. It's a sickeningly familiar feeling, and suddenly he knows why Dean's name and face ring a bell.

"Dean," he says, and Dean's eyes narrow. Stevie looks past him to the other man, who's busy putting the shotgun back together, too-long bangs falling into his eyes. He's a big guy, even bigger than Dean, but now Stevie can place that floppy hair and the catlike tilt of those dark eyes. "And this must be little Sammy. He's grown up."

The backhand comes out of nowhere, hard enough to snap his head back and make him see stars, and maybe he really does black out for a second, because for an instant he's on a dark highway at night, shoving a spitting, struggling armload of fourteen-year-old boy over the hood of his car

_"Take your fucking hands off me! I'll fucking kill you!"_

It's weird, the way it echoes in his head, clear and perfect as a bell, the small, broken noise Dean made when Stevie slammed his face into the trunk, the slender line of his back and his sweet, fragile mouth, smooth warm skin under his hands.

And then he's blinking tears out of his eyes and lifting his head to look at the man that boy has become. There's nothing fragile about his stubbled jaw or the muscular slope of his shoulders, but the most unnerving part is his intent, unblinking gaze. "Oh," he says, mouth twisting into something that isn't even close to a smile. "You do remember me."

Sam looks calmer than Dean--saner, certainly--but not, Stevie notes unhappily, as though he finds anything objectionable about his brother's behavior. "Look, we have two hours until midnight," he says, loading a round into the shotgun and setting it down next to him. "Either we can get him to tell us or you can beat him senseless and we can find the grave on our own. What's it gonna be?"

"I'm still thinking about it," Dean says darkly.

Sam looks up, catches Stevie's eyes. His expression, weirdly enough, makes Stevie think of the two semesters of college he did manage to finish, the impatient way professors used to look at him that always made him feel fumbling and stupid. "Steve, just tell us where you buried him. Then this'll all be over."

"Don't know what you're talking about," Steve says with all the bravado he can muster. Dean slaps him again, hard.

"You expect us to believe there's more than one of you fucking creeps trolling that stretch of highway?"

"You know, there could be," Sam interjects thoughtfully. "The other accident victims all had young boys in their cars. Could just be a coincidence, but..."

Dean looks over at him, purses his lips thoughtfully, and stands up. "Okay," he says, and jerks his chin at Stevie. "So we use him as bait. If it wasn't him, then no harm, no foul. If it was--"

Sam chews his lip, and for a second he looks like a scared, uncertain kid. Then the impression is gone, as quickly as it came. "Sure." He looks at Stevie consideringly, and Stevie remembers his little ten-year-old hands steadying a gun out on that highway. "Okay. Bait."


End file.
